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Poster: mcgannahan Date: Oct 14, 2007 6:54am
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: why jerry hated the doors

the doors references from that insane little fella noisecollector got me thinkin about a gans/jackson interview with garcia in conversations with the dead
here goes it:

JACKSON: we're doing an issue of bam magazine on the doors

GARCIA: i never liked the doors. i found them terribly offensive...when we played with them. it was back when jim morrison was just a pure mick jagger copy. that was his whole shot, that he was a mick jagger imitation. not vocally, but his moves, his whole physical appearance were totally stolen from right around mick jagger's 1965 tour of the states. he used to move around alot, before he started to earn a reputation as a poet, which i thought was really undeserved. rimbaud was great at eighteen,nineteen, and verlaine. those guys were great. fuckin jim morrison was not great, i'm sorry. i could never see what it was about the doors. they had a very brittle sound live., a three piece band with no bass- the organ player (manzarek) used to do it. that and that kinda raga-rock guitar style was strange. it sounded very brittle and sharp -edged to me., not something i enjoyed listening to. i kind of apreciated some of the stuff they did later, and i appreciated a certain amount of morrison's sheer craziness, just because that's always a nice trait in rock n roll. no, i never knew him, but richard loren, who works for us, was his agent and had to babysit him through his most drunken scenes and all the times he got busted and all that crap. he's got lots of storeies to tell about morrison. i was never attracted to their music at all, so i couldn't find anything to like about them. when we played with them, i think i watched the first tune or two, then i went upstairs and fooled around with my guitar. there was nothing there that i wanted to know about. he was so patently an imitation of mick jagger that it was offensive. to me, when the doors played san francisco they typified los angeles coming to san francisco., which i equated with having the look right, but zero substance. this is way before that hit song, light my fire. probably at that time in their development it was too early for anyone to make a decent judgement of them, but i've always looked for something else in music, and whatever it was, they didn't have it. they didn't have anything of blues, for example , in their sound or feel.
JACKSON: DID you sense the negativity?

jerry: no, not really. all i sensed was sham. as far as i was concerned, it was surface and no substance. then we played with them after the light my fire thing, when they were headliners. we opened for them in santa barbara some years later, when they were a little more popwerful. their sound had gotten better- they'd gotten more effectively amplified, so manzarek's bass lines and stuff like that had a little more throb, but their sound was still thin. it wasn't a succesful version of a three piece band, like the who or jimi hendrix, or cream, or any other guitar power trio type three piece bands. it's an interesting concept, a three piece band that's keyboard, guitar, drums, but it was missing some element i thought was vital. i couldn't say exactly what it was, but it was not satisfying for me to listen to them. when they were the headliners, it was sort of embarrasing for us to open for them, cause we sort of blew them off the stand with just sheer power. what we had with double drums and phil's bass playing-it got somewhere, and when they played there was an anticlimax feeling to it, even with their hits. in the part of my life when i was impressionable along that androgynous input, for me the people that were happening were james dean and elvis. early rock and roll- i'm like first generation rock and roll influence. for me, james dean was a real important figure. he was the romantic fulfillment of that vision.

it goes on about other things, but jerr really thrashes the doors here. and of course, he's right on.

taken from conversations with the dead. 6/11/81.















































































































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Poster: hardlyatall Date: Aug 10, 2019 9:53am
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

opinions like this are not based on logic but rather fear. The Doors scared people back then, especially the hippie love bands. They were not bad, just different. All the things Jerry Says here are not really logical (Mick Jagger rip off? Nobody said that in the 60s) just done out of personal dislike. The Doors are not poor musicians, they had good influences and interpretations of musical styles. Well before the Dead or the Beatles were doing heavy psych (Jan 67 was the first album). So these jerry comments are done out of fear and misunderstanding, not logic.

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Poster: Eine Zyste Für Gus Date: Sep 1, 2022 6:29pm
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

To be fair, in terms of technical playing ability, Robbie Krieger had only been playng guitar for four years ehen the first album came out, and couldn't begin to approach Jerry's level of guitar work. Don't get me wrong, I love the Doors' music, and I truly admire Robby's ability to be a creative player even at that time given his comparatively limited technique. Robbie was the main composer of Light My Fire; at the time the band had barely gotten started and wasn't making any money. He was still living with his parents in Pacific Palisades. Imagine being a teenager living in your parents' house, and'you've written what turns out to be a massive hit...I think it's one of the great stories of rock and roll.


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Poster: tonybot3 Date: Nov 7, 2018 2:35pm
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

I had first seen that quote sometime way back in the early 90's, and had always remembered it. Being such a Deadhead, it actually (and unfairly) turned me off from the Doors for decades. Only recently, have i come around to the fact that Jerry was simply being a bit of a hater here. Yes, its physically true that a 3-piece (if you don't count the singer) band is going to sound 'thin' compared to another band, but that shouldn't necessarily be an indictment. Its just 'different'. I don't see the Mick Jagger comparison at all. They both danced around. big deal. Not even similar type of dancing, nor similar type of dress, nor similar type of vocal, nor similar type of lyrics. If Jim was 'inspired' by Mick, well, then that is a good thing. Art is SUPPOSED to influence later art. With the advent of the Internet, its quite easy now to see interviews of bands talking crap about other bands, and to me, its just an ego thing. The Doors were a psycedellic band, same as the Dead, so Jerry sees them as competition. No one 'digs' their competition. Sports players don't typically hype up their opponent, business don't give props to other business, and bands aren't going to allow themselves to love other bands. This all came to a head, when i saw an interview with Keith Richards slamming Led Zeppelin, saying Jimmy Page was the only one remotely talented. And he only said THAT because he knew that if he dissed Page, he'd lose all credibility, as just a hater, which is what he was. Zeppelin was a peer group of the Stones, stealing their thunder, just like Doors and Dead would be competing for similar audiences. Jerry was wrong to be so negative. I do greatly admire Morrison's poetry, as well. I view the Doors music as nearly poetry, just set to music. Its a different type of rock, and its obviously lasted the test of time, so audiences get somthing out of it.
This post was modified by tonybot3 on 2018-11-07 22:35:19

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Poster: hardlyatall Date: Aug 10, 2019 9:57am
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

I agree with your post fully. You are right on.

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Poster: He Live's Date: Oct 14, 2007 12:15pm
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

oh you did that already

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Poster: jerkwaterdan Date: Oct 14, 2007 1:42pm
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

I read a funny story once about when the Dead opened for the Doors in Santa Barbara and it turned out that both Manzarek and Pig Pen had exactly the same kind of organ. Ray Manzarek asked Pig Pen if they could share the same keyboards so that the roadies wouldn't have to change the equipment around between sets. Pig just stared at him and walked away without saying a word, and made sure that Ramrod didn't let Manzarek so much as touch Pigs keyboard until the kwippies removed it and the Doors had to set up their own shit. So I guess it wasn't just Jerry who didn't care too much for the Doors. I believe Manzarek even wrote about this in his book.

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Poster: cream-puff-war Date: Oct 14, 2007 9:16pm
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

that's interesting too, that Pigpen story.
I imagine he didn't loan out his keyboards too often.

Manzarek was assuming a lot there, by asking to use the band's keyboards, I guess.
Manzarek was a serious musician, not a drunken poet in leather pants... didn't Jerry and Pigpen see that to some degree?
Later on that.


Jerry's comments on Morrison and The Doors offer a glimpse into Jerry's mindset.

He rarely (that I know of) said anything on the record that was negative about other artists.

It's possible Morrison was interpreting the quirky moves of Sky Saxon.
Morrison saw the The Seeds perform several times in '66, watching them from near the front of the stage.

The Seeds never played The Fillmore or any of the similar SF venues in '66-'67.
They were a teen top 40 band, I can't imagine the Dead would have liked them at all.
Or any of the other such bands - especially from LA.

While Graham booked some of those bands in '66-'68, he probably didn't like 'em either.

There's a lot that I could write about this subject but I don't know if it that'd be such a good idea.

Someone in a thread earlier today said they hated the '60s because their mother made too much about that decade.


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Poster: Pithecanthropus Date: Mar 20, 2012 8:35pm
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

@cream-puff-war: "Manzarek was assuming a lot there, by asking to use the band's keyboards, I guess."

I can't see it as being *that* out of line, especially since the Dead refused to allow any of their equipment to be moved (except for the guitars)." An organ's an organ; there's not really anything that can happen to an organ if you let someone else play it. I'm sure that, as Ray tried to explain, it did look a bit ridiculous that the Doors had to squeeze their own equipment up there, including the identical keyboards, not to mention Densmore having to play the set at stage level rather than on the riser. It's the Doors who should have been pissed off if anyone.


@cream-puff-war: "Manzarek was a serious musician, not a drunken poet in leather pants... didn't Jerry and Pigpen see that to some degree?"
Later on that. "

Besides the L.A. thing, I think it was the image generally. At this point the Doors had a good deal of counterculture/street cred, despite which Morrison's looks nevertheless brought in a lot of teenybopper girls; you can hear the shrillness in some of their audiences. The next most prominent member, Manzarek, favored mod suits or pants-and-jacket combos although omitting the tie. Serious rock artists were supposed to dress like peasants and glower moodily at the camera when the album cover was shot. The Doors got the glowering part right but otherwise their image was wrong for 1967.

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Poster: cream-puff-war Date: May 18, 2012 12:43am
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

Yes yeah, The Doors didn't look like other rock bands in 1967.

And they were threatening to re-imagine rock n roll in songs such as "The End"

The day I was supposed to run away in '67 to the Haight-Ashbury, I heard "Light My Fire" for the first time on the car radio, was hooked on The Doors instead of The Dead, I had my Mom to drive me to the Westlake Mall record shop to score the new Doors 45 instead.

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Poster: jerkwaterdan Date: Oct 14, 2007 10:03pm
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

cream puff war wrote:"While Graham booked some of those bands in '66-'68, he probably didn't like 'em either." Did you hear the story Bill Graham used to relate about the time he cautioned Morrison about twirling his microphone around only to be cracked in the head by it when Morrison got a little carried away? I imagine Bill Graham must have just exploded, just freaked out when that happened to him! Probably no love lost there! I seem to remember them including that scene in the bio-pic movie "The Doors" with Bill Graham doing a cameo appearance as "the promoter" and getting cracked by that microphone!
This post was modified by jerkwaterdan on 2007-10-15 05:03:58

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Poster: tonybot3 Date: Nov 7, 2018 4:24pm
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

Bill Graham does appear in The Doors film, and served as a Producer of the movie, however it was not his character who got hit in the head.

That character was played by singer Billy Vera, who was playing a Bill Graham-type concert promoter. he was in a cowboy hat.

I always thought that scene was a little slapstick and cartoonish, so its very interesting now to learn that it was actually based on a real event, but with Bill Graham. I had not heard that, but being that Graham was Producer, i'm sure he could've told that story to Oliver Stone quite easily, and they decided to include it.

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Poster: Pithecanthropus Date: Dec 13, 2012 8:19pm
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

As Manzarek wrote it, all the Dead's equipment except for the guitars had to stay up onstage during the Doors' set. Densmore was rightly pissed not having a drum riser, so Manzarek--even though he otherwise criticizes the drummer throughout for being quick to complain about whatever.

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Poster: Pithecanthropus Date: Mar 20, 2012 2:14pm
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

Manzarek does describe the incident in his book. Pig Pen did say a few words, but they were all on the lines of "Wha?" and "Huh?" and "Nobody touches the Grateful Dead's equipment, Jack!". He goes on to say how Densmore then had to play at stage level because the Dead's multitude of drums were not allowed to be moved.

Wasn't this right around the time when the Dead wanted to kick Pig Pen and Weir out of the band for not playing up to snuff? I think Manzarek could have played circles around Pig Pen so maybe the latter didn't want him using his keys. (To their credit, as I recall reading, Pig and Weir obstinately continued showing up anyway and managed to step up their playing, so the incident blew over.)

I'm not a Pig-hater by any stretch; for my money the Dead's early period is their best, and he was a huge part of that.

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Poster: daliguana Date: Oct 14, 2007 7:54am
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

So I was on the road from Sioux Falls, SD to Chicago in mid November in my '69 VW bus. It was 1990 and I'd been married for about a year. My (ex)wife and I had spent the summer fixing up the bus - crushed purple velvet on the walls, tapestry hung from the ceiling, dingle-berries around the windshield - the whole nine...
Anyway, I had dosed a couple of green-gel window panes to help with the 24 hour drive through Minn Wis and into Chi Town. I had a gas heater with a blower mounted in the engine compartment and the Door Greatest Hits blasting out the stereo. It was a full-scale blizzard and I could just make out the center line. The accelerator cable was frozen wide open and I was cruising at top speed (about 70mph). I had a five inch dryer-vent hose stuck under my parka to keep me warm. About every 10 min. or so, I'd throw the hose in the back, convinced that I was getting carbon monoxide poisoning. It was about midnight when the oil light came on (the generator light had been on since Austin, MN). The oil had dropped straight outta the pan and the engine screamed and popped as I coasted off the interstate at the Lodi, WI exit. In a couple hours, a sheriff pulled up and took me into Lodi. He told me I had two choices: spend money and get a room at the lodge they were building or spend the night in jail. The next day, I hitch a ride to the bus and the sheriff is just driving away, leaving about 5 or 6 tickets on the bus. He pulls around about an hour later with the scoop: I can pay the fines (totalling over $1,200) or I could sign the title over to the junkyard and they'd tow it away for free! Well, I called my buddy in Chicago and he came and got me and I had to sign the title over to the sheriff's friend. When my (ex)wife left six years later, she said that the night I'd left the bus in WI she knew that it was over.
Now, every time I hear The Doors, I can smell my VW's engine burning up.
And that's why I hate The Doors.

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Poster: Ellis Van Sofa Date: Oct 14, 2007 8:17am
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

wow, i've never heard Jerry be so negative about another artist.

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Poster: mcgannahan Date: Oct 14, 2007 8:31am
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

the doors records sounded o.k, but jer is right about the live sound. i used to have the doors live in concert way back when, and they did suck as a live band, performances were lacking depth and emotion. not much goin on there. they had some decent albums, most notably the first and second ones, but yeah, jer really lets loose, sounds like he envied them a little because of their huge sucksess.

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Poster: hardlyatall Date: Aug 10, 2019 9:58am
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

"Doors in Concert" is a poor representation of them live. It was edited with studio trickery by a misguided producer trying to relive his past. to say "did suck as a live band, performances were lacking depth and emotion. not much goin on there. " only shows your pardon me great overwhelming ignorance of the Doors. They blew up the stage when they performed, not every night, but a vast amount.

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Poster: Eine Zyste Für Gus Date: Sep 1, 2022 10:11pm
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

I agree about the Doors live sound on record. It sounds like you were listening to Absolutely Live, which I think isn't great outside of a few good cuts. I haven't listened to it in a long time, but I particularly liked Universal Mind. Thete are a few others. The album also sounds like the sound wasn't engineered that well. It wasn't like the band showedbup at the venue and couldn't play the music. They played the music well, but every thing sounds thin and trebly. Also Morrison's voice frequently sounded ragged, weak, and tired.


Absolutely Live is much better, as is a lot of the stuff that's been turning up on Youtube.

I

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Poster: mreyus Date: Oct 14, 2007 9:31am
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

the doors are, were, and always will be better than the best garage band around

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Poster: blacklakelight Date: Oct 14, 2007 12:00pm
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors


Morrison aped Jagger? No. I'm a huge Stones fan, seen a lot of Jagger, I just don't see that at all. Maybe at the time, though.

And hey, hats off Daliguana, for the name and for being able to drive on loose lucy. I could never do it, but I've been much indebted to those that could. Let me guess--you were also the guy who could drop at 5:30, hit the show, and be asleep by midnight if you wanted to.

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Poster: Pithecanthropus Date: Mar 20, 2012 2:34pm
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: Mick Jagger

A music critic or two had dubbed the Doors "America's Rolling Stones", which might have contributed to this rather bizarre theory on Garcia's part.

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Poster: L.A. Women Date: Oct 14, 2007 1:20pm
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

if you take some valium thats possible for sure it will put you right out

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Poster: blacklakelight Date: Oct 15, 2007 7:49am
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors


Yeah, but I knew a couple of folks who didn't need V or anything. Beer or two maybe, then boom, sound asleep eight hours later.

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Poster: Pithecanthropus Date: Mar 20, 2012 8:30pm
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

I've always been a huge Doors fan as far as their studio albums went, but I agree about Absolutely Live sucking. For whatever reason, the sound on those LPs seems to be badly mixed and the organ, here sounding like one of those toy electric organs a lot of us had as kids back then, overwhelms everything else. The drums, also, sound as though Densmore is bashing away on a 3/4-size toy set. The guitar sound is generally fat and muddy and, disappointingly, Krieger leaves out a lot of the subtle riffs he did in the studio. (Although, on a few cuts he does transcend his studio work IMO.) But overall, the sense of openness and space on the studio recordings is gone. I do think the second live LP, Alive She Cried, which is now included with the American Nights set that includes the early live album, was *much* better. Except for "The End", everything on there is at least as good if not better than its studio counterpart. I love the Dead too, but Jerry Garcia's no one to talk. The Dead issued a couple of scandalously bad live albums in their day, and they too had a less than stellar track record when it comes to showing up in a condition to be able to perform live. Their performance at Woodstock had to be cut from the film because it was so bad. Who can say that if the Doors had been invited they wouldn't have made a better showing that day? It's just Northern California bull. If the Doors hailed from Marin County I'm sure Garcia would have given them more credit.
This post was modified by Pithecanthropus on 2012-03-21 03:30:03

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Poster: Pithecanthropus Date: Dec 15, 2012 10:29pm
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: why jerry hated the doors

Or really...any artist being so negative about any other artist, provided the other artist was sincerely trying to create something worthwhile and not just a fake like Milli Vanilli. It's the one thing I can't stand about San Francisco, a place I otherwise love. As soon as they know you're from L.A., that's it, game over, as far as some people up there are concerned. ETA: I should clarify that I've almost never encountered this type of self-satisfied smugness in San Franciscans I've actually met or corresponded with. Rather it's something I often see expressed by members of the rock music elite, in interviews and articles.
This post was modified by Pithecanthropus on 2012-12-16 06:29:03